Consumer Behaviour

I once had a conversation with the Marketing Director of a brand that is a household name in which he suggested that no products had updated their brand identities.  We were having the conversation because his main brand was so tired that sales were in decline and customers didn’t see its packs on the shelves of their supermarkets: it looked exactly the same as it had a decade earlier (and it was hardly the most relevant product back then).

When I used Skoda as an example, he moved the goal posts to FMCG products. 

Then when I referenced other FMCG products that had dramatically redesigned their brand without disaster he argued that these weren’t in the same category as his product.

So his point was, that since none of his competitors had successfully updated their brand identity, he shouldn’t be the first one to risk it.

Except, of course, all of his competitors were either so new they hadn’t reached the point of needing a freshen up, or else they had updated their brand, he just hadn’t noticed.

It must be said, this manager was one of the most risk averse people I’ve ever met: it was a surprise that he took a chance of putting his feet in socks each day – who knows what could have been lurking inside them!

One of the best examples of rebranding is the British Royal Family (granted they aren’t a fast moving consumer good).  Before 1917 the royal family was a branch of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.  However, by that point in World War I associations with Germany weren’t desperately popular.  Matters were hardly improved when the German’s starting dropping bombs from their Gotha G.IV on England.

George V (or his advisers) decided a rebranding and repositioning job was called for.

It was decided, presumably without the need for a million pounds of design consultancy and consumer testing, that the rather more quaintly English ‘Windsor’ would do a better job of endearing the monarchy to the masses.

Crucially, this wasn’t just a case of calling the same snack by a new name and hoping people would accept it.  Yes, pretty much everything remained as it had been before. However, there were some important tweaks that, given that the broad support for the monarchy hadn’t yet been entirely eroded, were sufficient to edge things back in their favour for the next century or so.

He changed the rules about marriage; it was now possible for members of the British royal family to marry British people. 

The King also allied the monarchy to the emerging social forces: the honours system was changed and anyone in the country could receive an OBE (Order of the British Empire) award if it was felt they went beyond the ordinary: this included trades unionists and people who did voluntary work.  Now the monarchy wasn’t the enemy of “the people”.

One less fortunate change came when the Russian Tsar, a cousin of George V, turned to him for help when the Russian revolution took hold.  The King, fearing he would be seen as putting other nation’s interests above those of the British, refused to provide him with a safe haven: the Tsar of course was executed by the revolutionaries.

I think there are good lessons to learn from this event about the nature of rebranding and human (or consumer) psychology:

• If you want people to perceive your brand differently, you need to do more than just change the name – but changing the name gives you a chance both to create new associations and to harness those that already exist (provided you choose wisely).
• Provide a clear benefit that people can positively associate with the change.
• Once you’ve made a stand for something new, you need to act consistently with those values if you want them to be credible.
• Rebranding can’t easily transform ill will.  But it can catch people before they feel alienated and can give people a reason to reappraise how they feel if they are becoming ambivalent.

Back to that marketing director I mentioned.  Eventually he was persuaded to accept a minor updating of his brand.  It wasn’t everything that it could be, but it turned the brand from declining sales to growth for the first time in years.

Philip Graves

Philip Graves Marketing, consumer behaviour, market research consumer psychology, rebranding

I recently discovered some research which dovetails quite nicely with the blog I posted recently on Unconscious Advertising. 

Researchers wanted to explore the impact of drug companies’ low-key promotional items on medical students; were those scientifically-minded students, on the verge of becoming fully fledged doctors, susceptible to the old-fashioned marketing technique of branding any old trinket in the hope that your customer sees it and decides to choose you over a competitor?

The results shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who’s read my blog or my eBook.  But they are an interesting reminder that we could all benefit from tactical marketing that gets our brand around our customers as frequently as possible (however indirectly).

You can find the article under the Latest Articles section here.

As always, I’d love to hear your comments and thoughts.

Philip Graves

Philip Graves Marketing Advertising, Marketing, marketing communication

Following on from my post on the unconscious nature of advertising, Duane Cunninghamasked whether it was fair to say that any exposure was good for a brand?  The old chestnut of “there’s no such thing as bad PR”.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, when it comes to consumer behaviour and the workings of the consumer mind, there isn’t a clear cut answer in my opinion.  Let me explain…

For the most part exposure to a brand works positively.  As I’ve mentioned previously, the unconscious (largely visual) detection of brands builds unconscious familiarity and this alone is preferable to nothing.  When the brand is encountered consciously, it feels slightly familiar, safer and therefore slightly preferable to a previously unencountered rival.

Often there will be some associations with that brand.  It might be a high street sign, in which case the associations are with the environment of that high street (perhaps upmarket, perhaps skanky!).  Even without contextual associations, a brand logo may be redolent of another business or may use colours that carry particular associations, which will also shape the feeling created.

It is perfectly possible that mildly bad publicity will, over time, serve as a positive.  If all that is remembered is that the brand has been encountered before then, at an unconscious level, that is beneficial.  Where the bad publicity fails to stir up an appropriate level of emotion in the person, they may well quickly recall the negative component.

On the other hand negative labels have been shown to be very strong influencers of opinion.  Where a customer hears a story about a brand that is compelling and emotionally engaging (in other words, when it’s a good story), and particularly if that story emanates from a friend, it will be a prime association with the brand.

This bad association works at an unconscious level like the advice from a parent not to eat the poisonous berries on a bush; you’ve never tried the berries, nor have you ever seen someone eat them and fall to the ground clutching their stomach, but you have a reflexive reaction that they feel unappealing, which you will recognise (and post-rationalise) as a reason not to want to eat them.

Another element to consider is how confirmation bias fits in with bad publicity.  If someone was very critical of your favourite musician you wouldn’t attach anywhere near the same weight to it as if the same criticism was levelled at a musician you didn’t like.  Similarly, criticism of a brand you love may be perceived as an unwarranted attack that causes you to want to support that brand, rather than reappraise or reject it.

The strength of affinity for the brand will also determine how long bad publicity has an impact.  If the brand is really liked and the competitors are relatively weak (in terms of brand strength and distribution) customers will gravitate back to the brand relatively quickly.  The bottled water brand Perrier had a major health scare several years ago, but managed to survive the experience. 

Another brand of water, Dasani, marketed by Coca Cola had an ill-judged launch, bad publicity about it being filtered tap water that was associated with a famous and hugely popular comedy series (where the characters also marketed tarted up tap water) and then experienced a similar health scare.  Without a credible brand to support it the product was pulled and never sold again.

Philip Graves

So, it’s certainly possible to have bad publicity that can damage your business.

Philip Graves Advertising, Marketing Advertising, Dasani, marketing communication, Perrier, psychology

One of the joys of a home office is that the commute time is pretty short – I estimate 65 yards from breakfast to the desk.  My preferred option is to get straight into my work for the day – not because I’m one of these incredibly driven types, it’s just that I find it’s one of my most productive times of the day.

However, with two young children there’s some healthy competition for my time.  Today I opted for games before school, which meant a couple of games of table football with my son, one with both children and a game called Balloon Lagoon with my daughter.  They headed off to school and I started my day a little later than usual, but still considerably earlier than if I was commuting somewhere.

It was whilst I was helping Martha put the Balloon Lagoon game away in the cupboard that I reflected on the packaging for children’s games.

There is, it seems, a fashion with some manufacturers, to put their games in the smallest box possible.  Honestly, they must have CAD specialists and mathematicians working round the clock to figure out ways of getting X pieces of plastic and cardboard game components into the smallest conceivable box.

MB Games Mousetrap is hugely entertaining to play, but I can only get it back into the box properly afterwards if I treat putting it away as a Rubik-style puzzle all of it’s own!  The children have no chance.

So, you might be wondering, what has all this got to do with worrying about the consumer’s unconscious mind.

Well, here’s the thing.  All the evidence points to buying decisions being decisions being hugely influenced by unconscious elements; the apparently irrelevant artistic picture next to the product increasing perceptions of luxuriousness; the classical music playing causing customers to spend much more on wine than they otherwise would; and so on. 

Every time I do battle with that Mousetrap box I spend far more time being irritated by their penny-pinching design, than I do being impressed that they managed to fit it into such a small space.

And don’t even think about mentioning Tomy’s Ali Baba!  Once assembled it is totally impossible to close the box again, and I can’t believe it’s designed to be disassembled and reassembled each time – the plastic catches would soon snap.

And as I’m being irritated by the Mousetrap box and, now you’ve brought it up, the Ali Baba box too, what am I looking at?  A bright colourful logo for either MB Games or Tomy.

Now my unconscious mind is filtering this out as largely irrelevant, but it’s still seeing it.

So when I’m standing in front of the games at the toy store and I’m weighing up how much fun any game might be, those same brand logos are there for my unconscious to detect.  If the neural paths linking to that image include some negative associations (which they surely will, thanks to the clown who thought squeezing games into tiny boxes was worthwhile) that brand is disadvantaged. 

I won’t necessarily stand there and think about the problem of getting a game back into the box, but I may feel slightly less inclined towards one game and falsely post-rationalise this as being because the game looks less entertaining.

I realise that saving costs is a sensible goal to pursue for any business.  I can see that, with large volume products, a penny saved on a smaller cardboard box and the corresponding reduction in transportation costs can soon mount up to a worthwhile amount.

But it is important to understand consumer behaviour and, in particular, the role of the unconscious in consumer purchase decisions.  That’s one of the reasons I wrote “The Secret of Selling: How to Sell to Your Customer’s Unconscious Mind”; it explains how apparently peripheral elements can have a profound impact on what customer’s actually do.

It’s always wise to try to see what you’re doing through the eye of your would-be consumer; but it’s even more important to see this through the eye of their unconscious mind.

Philip Graves

Philip Graves Marketing, consumer behaviour choice, consumer behaviour, influence, MB Games, Mousetrap, packaging, The Secret of Selling, toys

Tinnitus expert Jennifer Battaglino mentioned that she would like some suggestions on how to apply memes in her marketing so I thought I would add to yesterday’s post on what makes for a good meme by talking about the ways in which you might use them.

Incidentally, questions like Jennifer’s are enormously helpful to me when I’m thinking what to write, so thank you for all your questions and comments (this is very much an interactive process – I hope it feels like it!)

The key is to think about any aspect of your business in terms of how readily it will be assimilated by your customers and potential customers and passed on. 

At the more obvious end are things like your brand name and website address; how easy are these to recall accurately first time?

Next come the slightly more subtle elements; is your logo distinctively expressed?  Does it have a unique feel to it that will reinforce it in the mind; does it conjure an image when people think of the company name?  The more your name is seen as a picture the more likely it is to be remembered.

Tag lines are incredible useful for creating memes; in fact one could argue quite reasonably that memes are what tag lines are all about.  They can seem extremely glib and silly when you know your business is about far more than a short catchphrase; but remember that the guy who makes baked beans cares about every aspect of his offer too; the recipe, ingredients quality, packaging, product consistency, value for money, heritage, and so on.

Remember that stories can work well as memes; on Kevin Hogan’s public speaking course he pointed us towards a website that had audio stories.  One, for a life coach, told the remarkable story of the lady’s childhood; it was mesmerising, gripping, horrific and totally memorable.  I have no need for a life coach on the other side of the Atlantic so her service was of no interest to me, but I remember that story vividly and could probably trace the lady if I suddenly felt a need for her services.

No hang on readers; that won’t do.  Give me a second.

OK, now I feel justified.  One google search with the words “life coach” and the key moment of her story and there she was, just a Google away.  The lady’s name is Rhonda Britten and her story is there as an audio file (a small link saying “Hear Rhonda’s Story”) it is a superb example of the power of story too. 

And whilst you’re there, take a look at what else she’s done that works well from the perspective of memes.  Her face is there, lots of people remember a face, and she calls her site “Fearless Living”.

Fortunately, not all of us have a story like Rhonda’s, but there may well be stories centred around what we do or why we do it.  One of the reasons bad service experiences are remembered and can spread so poisonously, is that the events around them work wonderfully well as stories. 

You have everything a story needs when a company lets you down: a setting; good guys and bad guys, twists and turns, and always some resolution and a moral (even if it’s just “never use this firm in your life”).

But here’s the thing: you can create stories about your business without waiting for something to go wrong.  Make your presentations memorable, go way beyond what people expect.  A lot of companies focus on customer satisfaction.  That’s fine.  But it’s not memorable.

On the other hand, what if after someone buys something from your shop, you’ve taken their money and everything has gone fine, you say, “Hold on a minute”.  You go into the store room and come out with a box containing something.  “I just got these in and I’d be really interested to know what you think of them.  Please take this, I think you’ll enjoy it, and if you get the chance let me know what you think next time you’re passing.”

Not many shops give you something after the deal is done (rather than as an incentive to buy); now you have something potentially meme-able; a reason for that person to tell their friends about what happened to them in your store.

I hope that gives you a few more ideas.

Philip Graves

Philip Graves Marketing incentives, Marketing, memes, Rhonda Britten, selling, stories, story

When it comes to marketing it’s important that your product, brand name, company name and proposition work as memes. 

That means making as many aspects of your offer as memorable and as easy to pass on as possible.

And as we saw yesterday, whilst having both is nice, memorable often beats meaningful.  Our heads are full of junk that we’ve heard from brands (and elsewhere) that have become etched into our unconscious, and we all know we’ve heard jokes, quotes or ideas that, at the time, seemed to us utterly brilliant, and yet a couple of hours later they’ve gone.

So what is it that makes a meme work well?  I’ll give you my personal opinion of what can help:

• Rhythm and rhymes create narrower options of associations thereby making it more likely that the whole phrase will be recalled accurately (if you can remember the first line, the rhythm and rhyme will lead you directly to the second line).
• Frequency / repetition – when something is repeated in the same way (style, tone, accent, cadence) it increases the likelihood of it being recalled.
• Music – music is very memorable.  I recall reading about one study that found people asked to sing a popular song didn’t just recall most of it, they even started on the right note.
• Alliteration – when we ‘know’ that one initial letter is repeated often in a phrase it narrows down the false associations we could divert to.
• Stories – for a longer message a story, with its forumlaic structure, is far more likely to be recalled than the same message in none contextual form.
• Utility – if there is a benefit to you of storing the meme you’re more likely to repeat it to yourself and therefore embed it more effectively.
• Quirkiness – the more something sounds like something else the greater the chance that you’ll make an error of association when you recall it.
• Intriguing – if it really intrigues you will lock it away whilst you look for answer, and you’ll remember it long after you have the answer too (“Who is John Galt?”).
• Concise – the shorter the better.

To give you an example of a (non-marketing) great meme; I was listening to someone advise someone else on how to undo a wheel nut.  “Righty tighty, lefty loosey”, he said, and I’ve never forgotten it. 

• It’s quirky: it actually contains ‘words’ that I never say in connection with anything else.
• It’s useful: I say it to myself on the rare occasions I’m poised over a nut of some kind and I know I’ll turn it the right way.
• It rhymes and has a good rhythmic feel.
• It has a little alliteration.

Pretty good, huh!

In his hugely enjoyable blog, JJ Jalopy posed the question, what do you say when people ask “what do you do”.  The more meme-able your answer the better.

I came up with, ”I help businesses understand customers better than their customers understand themselves”, which does moderately well on intrigue, no better.

In a recent post several people picked up on, “see your business through the eye of your customer’s unconscious mind”; again moderate intrigue is the best I can do.

“The psychology of shopping” is perhaps the best I’ve come up; it has alliteration on its side, is short and still a little intriguing.

How can you tell if what you have is memorable?

Recently someone recommended I read a book called Management Revisited.  Except that’s not the name of the book he recommended.  That was how my brain remembered it, but it (I) remembered it incorrectly. 

The moral of the story… if someone makes a mistake when they recall your name, company name, product name or slogan, then it hasn’t taken root as it could have done. 

If it’s not remembered accurately first time it’s very unlikely to work as a meme.  It will die like a fish on dry land.

And because frequency is a factor it’s worth resisting the temptation to change key parts of your communication too often.  Get it right and then give it the time to become familiar.

As you can see, it’s something I need to work on myself.

Philip Graves

Philip Graves Marketing Marketing, memes, psychology

Memes are a fascinating concept and vitally important to anyone with an interest in marketing. 

Defined as “… that which is imitated, after GENE n.) “An element of a culture that may be considered to be passed on by non-genetic means, esp. imitation.”

Crucially for someone with something to market, what meme theory says is that one aspect that contributes to effective marketing is how easily whatever it is you’re doing can be copied.

“Beanz Meanz Heinz” means roughly nothing.

But it’s very memorable and very easy to copy, so it gets propagated by people.  It enters your mind, gets remembered instantly and accurately, and stays way beyond the point where it serves any useful purpose to you (if it ever did). 

When it comes to buying beans the simple fact that the brand Heinz is familiar to your unconscious may well be sufficient for it to seem better (for which read a safer, less risky option) than any other available.

Some people go so far as to suggest that our entire mental world is made up of memes.

It is perfectly possible to hold (or host) conflicting memes, and certainly possible to host memes that aren’t particularly constructive or useful; some may even be damaging to us.  For example, supposing you believe that the readings from tea leaves can guide your future and they tell you not to seek medical attention for a condition that could be treated effectively by, say, antibiotics.  Your stupid tea leaf reading meme would be the prime cause of your death.

Some people dispute the theory of memes, saying that if everything is a meme, and copied for its own sake of being copied, then nothing makes any sense at all. 

But this ignores what I consider to be the key issue with memes; that of timescale. 

In my view, over an appropriately long timescale, only good memes will survive.  Good memes are those that serve a useful function for the people who host them.  But just as for genes, that timescale is many thousands of years, rather than the compressed periods people typically consider.

Lots of beliefs were fundamentally accepted in their day and now have no place in our brains.  There was a time when it was widely accepted that the sun and planets revolved around the earth.  Someone suggested it, it seemed a reasonable explanation for stuff in the sky changing, and even probably made the people who passed it on seem clever.  Now we don’t think of that thought, it’s been bumped by a different, more useful meme, that tells us our planet revolves around the sun.  Of course, most of the memes that died out are thoughts we have no historical record of and certainly no memory of – which helps us delude ourselves that everything we think is absolutely right.

So why is this so important to marketing?  I’ll tell you next time…

Philip Graves

Philip Graves Marketing Heinz, Marketing, memes, slogans